Noncooperative Foundations of Stable Sets in Voting Games.

This note investigates the noncooperative foundations of von Neumann-Morgenstern (vN-M) stable sets in voting games. To do so, we study subgame perfect equilibria of a noncooperative legislative bargaining game, based on underlying simple games. The following results emerge from such an exercise: Every stable set of the underlying simple game is the limit set of undominated pure-strategy Markov perfect equilibria, and of strategically stable sets of undominated subgame perfect equilibria of the bargaining game with farsighted voters.Legislative bargaining, committee, strategic stability, stable set.

Secessionism and Minority Protection in an Uncertain World

With the changing economic circumstances confronting their countries, regionally concentrated minorities have been facing a strategic problem, important aspects of which can be stylized as a situation in which a minority leader is uncertain about the costs of secession for her community. This paper shows that this uncertainty is a central cause of secession, using a model which incorporates both policies to appease secessionist aspirations and informational asymmetries. In a situation of asymmetric information, in which the policy-maker is better informed about the consequences of separation than the minority leader, signaling incentives make secession the unique equilibrium outcome, whether mutually advantageous compromises exist or not. We also show that the ruling majority may seek to maintain political unity by pre-committing to minority protection rules which prevent bluffing by the informed policy-maker. Additionally, the model generates comparative statics results on the question of which states are most likely to adopt constitutional rules protecting the minorities living within their borders.Constitutional commitment, secession, signaling, regional redistribution

Redistribution in the Open Economy: A Political Economy Approach

This paper develops a two-country model of international trade in which citizens who are heterogeneous with respect to their factor endowments vote over tariffs and income tax rates. In the politico-economic equilibrium, each country chooses its national policies by majority voting, taking the policy choice of the other country as given. By incorporating both income and trade taxes in a unified international-trade framework, we uncover the interplay between majority voting over these two instruments at the domestic level and strategic interdependencies between countries’ trade policies. Our main result is that greater inequality can be conducive to more redistribution via income taxation, more protectionist policies in capital-abundant countries, and less protectionist policies in labour-abundant countries. The model can accommodate the predictions of recent empirical studies on the relationship between inequality, protectionism, and redistribution.International trade, majority voting, inequality, income taxation, tariffs.

Voting under the Threat of Secession: Accommodation vs. Repression

We build a model of secession crises where voters may wish to accommodate the minority to prevent secession. We show the existence of a majority voting equilibrium with a government’s type biased in favor of the minority. We propose a measure of secession risk and perform the comparative static analysis of the equilibrium policy location and of the secession risk with respect to the cultural distinctiveness of the two regions, the relative weight attached by voters to economic factors, the relative size of the minority region, the probability that a secession attempt is successful, and the intra-regional heterogeneity of preferences.majority voting, secession risk, cultural distinctiveness, conflict, overlapping regional preferences

Voting under the threat of secession: accommodation vs. repression

We build a simple model of secession crises where a majority of voters may wish to accommodate the minority in order to prevent a secession attempt. We first show the existence of a majority voting equilibrium, where the median voter is decisive and most prefers a government’s type that is biased in favor of the minority. We then propose a measure of the secession risk at equilibrium and perform the comparative static analysis of the equilibrium policy location and of the secession risk with respect to several parameters: the cultural distinctiveness of the two regions, the relative weight attached by voters to economic (centripetal) -as opposed to (centrifugal) ideological- factors, the relative size of the minority region, the (exogenous) probability that a secession attempt is successful, and the intra-regional heterogeneity of preferences.Majority voting, secession risk, cultural distinctiveness, conflict, overlapping regional preferences

Dynamic bargaining and stability with veto players

This note examines the structure of stationary bargaining equilibria in the finite framework of Anesi (2010). The main result establishes a tight connection between the set of equilibrium absorbing points and the von Neumann-Morgestern solutions: assuming that players are patient, that the voting rule is oligarchical, and that there is at least one veto player with positive recognition probability, a set of alternatives corresponds to the absorbing points of an equilibrium if and only if it is a von Neumann-Morgenstern solution. We also apply our analysis of ergodic properties of equilibria to the persistent agenda setter environment of Diermeier and Fong (2012). We show that all equilibria are essentially pure, and we extend their characterization of absorbing sets to allow an arbitrary voting rule and by removing the restriction to pure strategy equilibira

Trying Times: Disability, Activism, and Education in Samoa, 1970-1980

In the 1970s and 1980s, Samoan women organizers established Aoga Fiamalamalama and Loto Taumafai, which were educational institutions in Samoa, an island in the Pacific. Establishing these schools for students with intellectual and physical disabilities, excluded from attending formal schools based on the misconception that they were uneducable . In this project, I seek to understand how parent advocates, allies, teachers, women organizers, women with disabilities, and former students of these schools understood disability, illness, inclusive education, and community organizing. Through interviews and analysis of archival documents, stories, cultural myths, legends related to people with disabilities, pamphlets, and newspaper media, I examine how disability advocates and people with disabilities interact with educational and cultural discourses to shape programs for the empowerment of people with disabilities. I argue that the notions of ma’i (sickness), activism, and disability inform the Samoan context, and by understanding, their influence on human rights and educational policies can inform our biased attitudes on ableism and normalcy